1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to an electronic device having a tactile sensation presenting function of presenting a tactile sensation in response to a user's operation.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are conventional public terminal devices with a touch panel (e.g., ATMs or automatic ticket vending machines, etc.). Personal devices with a touch panel (e.g., tablet PCs or smartphones, etc.) have also been increasing.
A touch panel is an input device for detecting a touch on the panel as an input. Typically, a touch panel includes a liquid crystal display or an organic EL display, etc. In such a case, a touch panel is referred to also as a touch display or a touch screen. For example, a touch panel detects a user's touch on a GUI object (e.g., a button) displayed in the display area.
A user interface using such a touch panel is advantageous in that it is highly flexible in terms of the arrangement of GUI objects. However, user interfaces using touch panels provide a weaker sensational feedback when a button is pressed, as compared with a user interface using conventional mechanical buttons. Therefore, there is a problem in that when a user touches the touch panel, it is difficult for the user to know whether or not the touch has been detected properly. In order to solve this problem, a method has been proposed in the art, in which a tactile sensation (haptics) is presented by vibrating the touch panel in response to a touch (e.g., Patent Document No. 1 (Japanese National Phase PCT Laid-Open Publication No. 2011-527791)).
Patent Document No. 1 (Japanese National Phase PCT Laid-Open Publication No. 2011-527791) discloses a tactile multi-touch technique in which the vibration is maximized at a particular one of positions touched by fingers of a user while reducing or minimizing the vibration at the other ones of the positions.
This technique is directed to a tactile touch panel that gives a tactile sensation to a user by flexural vibrations generated from a plurality of vibration sources, in which a tactile sensation can be generated only on a particular one of a plurality of fingers of a user touching the panel by maximizing the amplitude of a flexural wave at a particular position while reducing or minimizing the amplitude at the other positions by controlling the plurality of vibration sources.